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About words and concepts of one language are grouped differently in another language
Day twenty-five -- About "words and concepts of one language are grouped differently in another language". Question -- from "Trailsend" -- When I said that different languages are not isomorphic, I was trying to get at this idea: There is a certain group of concepts which are all represented by the English word at. However, these concepts are not grouped identically in all languages. For example, depending on the situation, the correct Japanese equivalent for "at" could be ? (ni), or it could be ? (de), or it could be achieved using some entirely different structure. Furthermore, ? is used in Japanese to mean many things which are not equivalent to any of English's meanings of at. (For example, ??color=red?/color?????, "I met a friend.") How will you encode ? for PreBabel (Japanese)? Will you still use (dot, stop)? If so, when someone who knows PreBabel (Japanese) attempts to learn PreBabel (English), they will be struck with a slew of problems and inconsistencies. The (dot, stop) they knew is suddenly being used for all kinds of things that make no sense with their "mental picture" of it, and it is not being used for many things which do fit their picture. Answer -- Indeed, this is the key issue for the PreBabel. In fact, all questions or critiques posted to this thread so far were contemplated during my writing on PreBabel. Yet, they were not problems for PreBabel. I simply wanted to "cover" them in the paper; so the paper will not be criticized. However, seemingly, none of you truly read the paper "The theory and the method of constructing a true Universal Language." Of course, I cannot demand any of you to read it; so I answered them in this forum again from some different angles for those questions. However, this issue of Trailsend's was, indeed, a problem during the construction of PreBabel. As the PreBabel was intended to be the universal language, then it will be the ideal for two different natural languages to share a same set of PreBabel vocabulary, at least, sharing a partial set. That is, if Japanese (word x) is equivalent to English (word y) in translation, then J(x) and E(y) can and should have the same PreBabel coding. I did know that some concepts which are represented by one language are not grouped identically in other languages. But, seemingly, the concrete words (such as, book, apple, etc.) should not have this problem. Of course, this is not the case. "Book" is as concrete as any item can be. Yet, its usage is not concrete at all, such as, a book, book value, book a ticket, etc.. Thus, there is no point of trying to get J(x) and E(y), which are equivalent in translation, to have the same PreBabel coding. Then, will the PreBabel project fail if this is the case? After a detailed analysis, this problem is not truly relevant to the PreBabel. We will encode English for PreBabel (English) without concerning about any other language. We will encode Japanese for PreBabel (Japanese) without concerning about any other language. So, PreBabel (English) is a pure dialect of English. PreBabel (Japanese) is a pure dialect of Japanese. E(y) has many usages in English, E1(y), E2(y),..., En(y).... In my last post, I stated that there needs only one PreBabel (E(y)) for all these En(y). In the case, E(y) = J(x) in translation. Then, PB (E(y)) and PB (J(x)) are synonyms while they might not have the identical PB codes. In the case Jn(x) cannot be translated with any of the En(y) but must use the word E(z). The PB (Jn(x)) and PB (E(z)) are synonyms. Of course, both PreBabel (English) and PreBabel (Japanese) are parts (dialects) of PreBabel (Proper). When (above, mountain) = sky in PB (English) while (above, sea) = sky in PB (Japanese), there is no conflict on this. They are simply synonyms in PB (Proper). If (above, sea) = ship in PB (English), then it is simply a homonym in the PB (Proper). As the PB (English) and PB (Japanese) are constructed independently, the issue of difference in culture among different languages is not really an issue. The synonym and homonym issues can be resolved in the PB (Proper). Signature -- PreBabel is the true universal language, it is available at http://www.prebabel.info